We present broad band and Her photometry as well as long slit spectros
copy at four different position angles for the barred Sa galaxy NGC 67
01. The images show a very prominent diamond-shaped bar lying almost a
long the disc minor axis. The bar is especially bright along the most
external regions of its major axis. The signature of star forming proc
esses can be seen in those regions by their bluer colors and also from
the Ha: image. Two distinct dust lanes trace the inner sides of these
bright features. The spectroscopic results point to the presence of s
hocks along the dust lanes, in agreement with some numerical simulatio
ns of barred galaxies. In fact, the properties of NGC 6701 resemble th
ose found in simulations quite well. The kinematical analysis of NGC 6
701 shows a perturbed rotation curve. This galaxy shows many of the si
gns supposed to be consequences of interaction. We report the redshift
of a nearby, small galaxy, which turns out to be a physical companion
to NGC 6701. The redshift difference is only 145 km s(-1) and the pro
jected distance is 73 kpc (with Ho = 75 km s(-1)Mpc(-1)). The peculiar
ities in NGC 6701 could thus be produced by the interaction with this
small companion.